Use your water wisely

My son loves playing with water and I reluctantly keep the tap running whenever he bathes, washes his hands or brushes his teeth. But the other day, I came up with a brilliant idea, or so I thought. I gave him a spray bottle and it worked fine for awhile until he went berserk and started to spray everything in sight, including me.

I have always thought that I use too much water, and living in the western world I probably do. In fact, I just read in a UN report (Dirty Water, 2010) that it takes about 2000 to 5000 litres of water to produce a person's daily food. The reason why this is a problem is because only 1 per cent of the already meager 2,5 per cent of fresh water that exists in the world is available for human consumption. The other 97,5 per cent is salt water.

The other problem is wastewater. The majority of the water being used by humans is being flushed right back into the oceans and rivers, untreated. No wonder why millions of people die of water-related diseases every year. In fact, every 20 seconds a child under five dies as a result of us not caring where or how our dirty water is being dumped (Dirty Water, UN Report, 2010).

So, what can we do about it? The best solution would be if countries put in place proper sanitation and water cleaning systems, but it is pretty hard to convince politicians to do so if you're not a heavy weight politician yourself or member of an environmental organization. But there is still plenty of things we as individuals can do, such as eating less meat as a lot of water is being used to produce our burgers (Dirty Water, UN Report, 2010). And after reading the UN report, I now also know why you're not suppose to buy bottled water: In the US, producing water bottles alone requires 17 million barrels of oil a year and it takes three litres of water to produce one litre of bottled water. Basically, we could go a long way by consuming less.